The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager's Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life

Mike Matheny was just 41, without professional managerial experience and looking for a next step after a successful career as a Major League catcher, when he succeeded the legendary Tony La Russa as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. While Matheny has enjoyed immediate success, leading the Cards to the postseason three times in his first three years, people have noticed something else about his life, something not measured in day-to-day results.

Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

Given unprecedented access to La Russa and his team, best-selling journalist Bissinger captures baseball's strategic and emotional essence. We watch from the dugout as La Russa's Cardinals take on their archrivals, the Chicago Cubs, in a thrilling three-game series.

Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was old school and stubborn. But after 20 straight losing seasons and his job on the line, he was ready to try anything. So when he met with GM Neal Huntington in October 2012, they decided to discard everything they knew about the game and instead take on drastic "big data" strategies.

The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Thing in Sports

Yahoo's lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports - the pitching arm - and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.

Bob Vance says:"A MUST READ for every youth baseball parent and coach"

Stan Musial: An American Life

When baseball fans voted on the top 25 players of the twentieth century in 1999, Stan Musial didn’t make the cut. This glaring omission - later rectified by a panel of experts - aised an important question: How could a first-ballot Hall of Famer, widely considered one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, still rank as the most underrated athlete of all time? In Stan Musial, veteran sports journalist George Vecsey finally gives this 20-time All-Star and St. Louis Cardinals icon the kind of prestigious biographical treatment previously afforded to his more celebrated contemporaries....

Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV

Sports fans see Joe Buck everywhere: broadcasting one of the biggest games in the NFL every week, calling the World Series every year, announcing the Super Bowl every three years. They know his father, Jack Buck, is a broadcasting legend and that he was beloved in his adopted hometown of St. Louis. Yet they have no idea who Joe really is. Or how he got here. In Lucky Bastard, Joe takes the listener into the broadcast booth and into his childhood home. Hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking, this is a book that any sports fan will love.

brianrainstorm says:"I thought you were the guy in Midnight Cowboy..."

Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty

A baseball rules book. A tape measure. A lottery ticket. These were in the pocket of Bengie Molina's father when he died of a heart attack on the rutted Little League field in his Puerto Rican barrio. The items serve as thematic guideposts in Molina's beautiful memoir about his father, who, through baseball, taught his three sons about loyalty, humility, courage, and the true meaning of success.

The Baseball Whisperer: A Small-Town Coach Who Shaped Big League Dreams

Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, a baseball whisperer who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl's original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the ghetto in Los Angeles who would one day become a beloved Hall of Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball reveals a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

Pedro

Before Pedro Martinez was the eight-time All-Star, three-time Cy Young Award winner, and World Series champion, before stadiums full of fans chanted his name, he was just a little kid from the Dominican Republic who sat under a mango tree and dreamed of playing pro ball. Now, in Pedro, the charismatic and always colorful pitcher opens up for the first time to tell his remarkable story.

Kindle Customer says:"Entertaining story is marred by subpar narration"

Game of My Life: St. Louis Cardinals: Memorable Stories of Cardinals Baseball

Dating back to the Gas House Gang of the 1930s and up to the club’s most recent World Championship in 2006, being a Cardinal has meant a style of play, a level of dedication, and a pride in being a member of a special group. This newly updated edition of Game of My Life: St. Louis Cardinals exhibits not always the best game of someone’s career, but rather, the moment that stands out the most.

The Yankee Years

Joe Torre is the most successful and most respected baseball manager of the modern era, steering the Yankees to six American League pennants and four World Series championships. When he left the team in 2007, it was front-page news around the country. Famously diplomatic during his tenure with the Yankees, Torre finally speaks out about what it was like building and managing the dynasty during those 12 glorious and tumultuous years.

The Baseball Codes

Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. What truly governs the Major League game is a set of unwritten rules, some of which are openly discussed (don’t steal a base with a big lead late in the game), and some of which only a minority of players are even aware of (don’t cross between the catcher and the pitcher on the way to the batter’s box).

House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge

Eclipsing the traditional sports memoir, House of Nails, by former world champion, multimillionaire entrepreneur, and imprisoned felon Lenny Dykstra, spins a tragicomic tale of Shakespearean proportions - a relentlessly entertaining American epic that careens between the heights and the abyss. Nicknamed "Nails" for his hustle and grit, Lenny approached the game of baseball - and life - with mythic intensity.

The Closer: Young Readers Edition

Mariano Rivera never dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. He didn't grow up collecting baseball cards, playing Little League, or cheering on his home team at the World Series. He had never heard of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, or Mickey Mantle. But one day, that all changed...

Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution

Most people who resist logical thought in baseball preach "tradition" and "respecting the game". But many of baseball's traditions go back to the 19th century, when the pitcher's job was to provide the batter with a ball he could hit and fielders played without gloves. Instead of fearing change, Brian Kenny wants fans to think critically, reject outmoded groupthink, and embrace the changes that have come with the "sabermetric era".

The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

It's the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies - with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics.

The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers

In the fall of 1992, America's national pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation.

Stranger to the Game: The Autobiography of Bob Gibson

Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson has always been one of baseball's most uncompromising stars. Gibson's no-holds-barred autobiography recounts the story of his life, from barnstorming around the segregated South with Willie Mays' black all-stars to his astonishing later career as a three-time World Series winner and one of the game's all-time greatest players.

Ball Four: The Final Pitch

When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four.

The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse

In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.

Belichick and Brady: Two Men, the Patriots, and How They Revolutionized Football

Featuring interviews from Patriots players and coaches, Holley presents a fascinating portrait of the partnership between Tom Brady, the Patriots' star quarterback, and Bill Belichick, the team's prolific coach. Chock-full of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and information exploring how they have strategized and weathered controversies, all culminating in four Super Bowl rings, this is required listening for any Patriots fan and students of the game of football.

Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero

He was one of the greatest figures of his generation, and arguably the greatest baseball hitter of all time. But what made Ted Williams a legend, and a lightning rod for controversy in life and in death? New York Times best-selling author Leigh Montville delivers an intimate, riveting account of this extraordinary life.

Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time

What does it mean to play heads-up baseball? A heads-up player has confidence in his ability, keeps control in pressure situations, and focuses on one pitch at a time. His mental skills enable him to play consistently at or near his best despite the adversity baseball presents each day.

Publisher's Summary

The team that refused to give up their manager in his final season.... A comeback that changed baseball....

After 33 seasons managing in Major League Baseball, Tony La Russa thought he had seen it all - that is, until the 2011 Cardinals. Down ten and a half games with little more than a month to play, the Cardinals had long been ruled out as serious postseason contenders. Yet in the face of those steep odds, this team mounted one of the most dramatic and impressive comebacks in baseball history, making the playoffs on the night of the final game of the season and going on to win the World Series despite being down to their last strike - twice.

Now La Russa gives the inside story behind this astonishing comeback and his remarkable career, explaining how a team with so much against it was able to succeed on baseball's biggest stage. Opening up about the devastating injuries, the bullpen struggles, the crucial games, and the players who made it all possible, he reveals how the team's character shaped its accomplishments, demonstrating how this group came together in good times and in bad to become that rarest of things: a team that actually enjoyed it when the odds were against them.

But this story is much more than that of a single season. As La Russa, the third-winningest manager in baseball history, explains, their season was the culmination of a lifetime spent studying the game. Laying bare his often scrutinized and frequently misunderstood approach to managing, he explains his counterintuitive belief in process over result, present moments over statistics, and team unity over individual talent. Along the way he shares the stories from throughout his career that shaped his outlook - from his first days managing the Chicago White Sox to his championship years with the Oakland A's, to his triumphant tenure as St. Louis's longest-serving manager. Setting the record straight on his famously intense style, he explores the vital yet overlooked role that his personal relationships with his players have contributed to his victories, ultimately showing how, in a sport often governed by cold, hard numbers, the secret to his success has been surprisingly human.

Speaking candidly about his decision to retire, La Russa discusses the changes that he'd observed both in the game and in himself that told him, despite his success, it was time to hang up his spikes. The end result is a passionate, insightful, and remarkable look at our national pastime that takes you behind the scenes of the comeback that no one thought possible and inside the mind of one of the game's greatest managers.

Yes, there will be bias here - I'm a Cardinals fan, and I'm enjoying this book. I'm only on chapter 18, but the book walks the listener through the 2011 season and the subsequent post-season. As expected, LaRussa gets off on (appreciated) tangents which adds to greater insight of the game itself.

This is not just a book about Tony. It's a great course on management by getting buy-in from 25 different personalities and getting the team to focus on EFFORT, not just results. My favorite quote early on is when LaRussa describes winning as a process, not a result.

As you can expect, there are a plethora of stories added along the way. By far my favorite is when his 1996 club (his first year managing the Cardinals) was not buying into his philosophy. During a trip to Chicago, he took some of his veteran players to a Bulls practice. The Cardinals players that went were impressed with the way the Bulls approached their practice (hard and intense). I'm also sure it didn't hurt to see Jordan and Pippen walking up to Tony and calling him by his first name. After that little field trip, the 1996 Cardinals started to turn things around.

Tony read the first chapter, and through the next 17, the other narrator has read the rest. Scott Sowers reads this well, but I wished the two would have alternated chapters.

Would you consider the audio edition of One Last Strike to be better than the print version?

No

What did you like best about this story?

Insights into baseball and building a winning team.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

yes

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

One Last Strike

Any additional comments?

While a very good baseball book, it also offers valuable insights into leadership and an appreciation of how every individual can play an important role in the sucess of any team, organization or business. The fact that it involved colorful characters from Yadi, Albert, Carp and Freeze; plus that it told the story of the greatest baseball season in the history of baseball (well, at least from a Cardinal perspective), made it extremely enjoyable.

I'm a Cardinals fan and found the back stories interesting but there were way too many literal play-by-plays of different games. I was also disappointed Tony didn't actually read the entire book. He just read the very beginning. I'm a Tony La Russa fan & part of the draw was having hear it in his own words. Overall a pretty average listen.